thread: 2009-05-04 : Dice and Cloud, the Death Threats thread
On 2009-05-10, Alex F wrote:
Vincent, I have a question about Dogs and rightward pointing arrows. It's partly rule clarification, but also arrow-clarification.
Let's say I have the trait: "Charms every good wife"
I'm in a conflict with Sister Prudence, who Raises me with
"Another man who thinks he knows best, another reason I never married; sir, I'll bend not to your foolishness"
There are three approaches that stand to me here, and not sure which one is rules-supported. For each, I'll take a stab at what Sister Prudence's raise itself means in terms of the diagrams.
1a) It's now difficult / impossible for me to pull this trait in within the conflict, based on the veto the group has upon what constitutes a legit raise.
1b) There is a rightward facing arrow from fiction to character sheet (Traits section): something that occurred in the fiction (Prudence's raise) has determined that something on my character sheet is currently out-of-bounds and cannot be drawn into mechanics currently.
2a) I'm free to pull this trait in within the conflict by alluding to it in a negative way, e.g. "Crikey*, Sister Prudence, your sharp tongue shows you as no good wife. I can see I will have a battle winning you around", rolling in the trait dice, but likely Taking the Blow, in accordance with the weakness of the See
2b) There is no rightward facing arrow as the content of the fiction has not materially limited which resources to pull in (boxes), rather how they are expressed. The only consequences to my boxes are caused by other boxes, in the form of the total dice of the Raise.
Clearly, there's a bit of a continuum, but I think I've tended to play in the more permissive way of 2, where each trait is basically a free-floating resource that you can draw dice from as long as you broadly reference it in your raise somehow.
This essentially treats traits/relationships/stuff as a Commodity. My resources are not constrained by your raises. This round of theory has made me reconsider my play - and also, the design. I'd be interested to hear your design intent for the Call-on descriptor element of Dogs; open to the group or mindfully designed one way?
*Ask David Berg... apparently my Dogs play sounds jarringly English.
